American Testament: The Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible and is a record of God's dealings with His chosen people in the New World. The main purpose of the Book of Mormon is "to the convincing of Jew and Gentile that JESUS is the CHRIST, the ETERNAL GOD, manifesting himself unto all nations." (Book of Mormon Title Page) It was written by ancient American prophets for our day (Mormon 8:35) and is an American testament of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Friday, May 11, 2018

Elder Tad R. CallisterSunday School General PresidentThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

A question I sometimes hear from people is whether the Book of Mormon came from the mind of a man or if it is real scripture from God.

This excellent talk, "The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?", by Elder Tad R. Callister of the Sunday School Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will shed more light on this question. In the talk, he explores the many explanations that try to account for how the Book of Mormon came to be. He also addresses the holes in those explanations.

He covers the following proposed explanations:

Joseph Smith, alleged to be an ignorant man, wrote the Book of Mormon

Someone else wrote it

The Book of Mormon was plagiarized from other books

Joseph suffered from a mental illness

Joseph Smith was a creative genius who, shaped by his environment, wrote the Book of Mormon

He also covers the following:

Where did Joseph get the doctrine?

A parable that counters the arguments proposed by the critics

Other evidences that the Book of Mormon is not man-made

Ultimately, though, the truth about scripture comes from the Spirit. As he notes in his conclusion:

If I were to ask my good Christian friends how they unquestionably know the Bible is the word of God, I do not believe they would cite archaeological discoveries or linguistic connections with ancient Hebrew or Greek as their prime evidence; rather, they would make reference to the Spirit. It always comes back to the Spirit. The Spirit that helps me know the Bible is true is the very same Spirit that helps me know the Book of Mormon is true.

The Spirit is the decisive, determining factor—not archaeology, not linguistics, not DNA, and certainly not the theories of man. The Spirit is the only witness that is sure and certain and infallible.

We can read hundreds of theories and explanations without ever coming to a knowledge of the truth. What will bring us to truth is prayer and faith. Have you prayed to know whether the Book of Mormon is true?

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Everybody knows the Book of Mormon is a fraud, right? Right? I mean, after Joseph Smith died, people came out of the woodwork to finally deny what his "mesmerism" had forced them to attest to. Finally, they were free to say whatever they liked about the Book of Mormon!

Except, that's not what actually happened (sorry if you were told otherwise).

Joseph Smith, Sr. (the prophet's father), Hyrum Smith and Samuel H. Smith (the prophet's brothers), Peter Whitmer, Jr., and Christian Whitmer never recanted their testimonies. All died faithful to the Church.

Here are the quotes of those witnesses of the Book of Mormon who later left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some of them left for good. Others eventually returned to full activity.

David Whitmer (left, but came back)

In regards to my testimony to the visitation of the angel, who declared to us three witnesses that the Book of Mormon is true, I have this to say: Of course we were in the spirit when we had the view, for no man can behold the face of an angel, except in a spiritual view, but we were in the body also, and everything was as natural to us, as it is at any time. Martin Harris, you say, called it 'being in vision.' We read in the Scriptures, Cornelius saw, in a vision, an angel of God. Daniel saw an angel in a vision; also in other places it states they saw an angel in the spirit. A bright light enveloped us where we were, that filled at noon day, and there in a vision, or in the spirit, we saw and heard just as it is stated in my testimony in the Book of Mormon.

It having been represented by one John Murphy, of Polo, Caldwell County, Mo., that I, in a conversation with him last summer, denied my testimony as one of the three witnesses to the BOOK OF MORMON. To the end, therefore, that he may understand me now, if he did not then; and that the world may know the truth, I wish now, standing as it were, in the very sunset of life, and in the fear of God, once for all to make this public statement: That I have never at any time denied that testimony or any part thereof, which has so long since been published with that Book, as one of the three witnesses. Those who know me best, well know that I have always adhered to that testimony. And that no man may be misled or doubt my present views in regard to the same, I do again affirm the truth of all of my statements, as then made and published. He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear; it was no delusion!

If your honor please, and gentlemen of the jury, the attorney on the opposite side has challenged me to state my connection with Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon: and as I cannot now avoid the responsibility, I must admit to you that I am the very Oliver Cowdery whose name is attached to the testimony, with others, as to the appearance of the Angel Moroni; and let me tell you that it is not because of my good deeds that I am here, away from the body of the Mormon Church, but because I have broken the covenants I once made, and I was cut off from the Church, but, gentlemen of the jury, I have never denied my testimony, which is attached to the Book of Mormon, and I declare to you here that these eyes saw the angel, and these ears of mine heard the voice of the angel, and he told us his name was Moroni; that the book was true, and contained the fulness of the gospel, and we were also told that if we ever denied what we had heard and seen that there would be no forgiveness for us, neither in this world nor in the world to come.

Source: The Restored Church, 7th ed., p.74-75

Martin Harris (left, but came back)

The Book of Mormon is no fake. I know what I know. I have seen what I have seen and I have heard what I have heard. I have seen the gold plates from which the Book of Mormon is written. An angel appeared to me and others and testified to the truthfulness of the record, and had I been willing to have perjured myself and sworn falsely to the testimony I now bear I could have been a rich man, but I could not have testified other than I have done and am now doing for these things are true.

(Source: Martin Harris on his death bed. Cited by George Godfrey, “Testimony of Martin Harris,” from an unpublished manuscript copy in the possession of his descendants, quoted in Eldin Ricks, The Case of the Book of Mormon Witnesses [Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1971], 65–66.)

David Whitmer's brothers John Whitmer and Jacob Whitmer, along with Hiram Page were all excommunicated in 1838 and never returned to activity in the Church. Yet, they also never recanted their testimonies.

So, there were a total of 11 witnesses, 5 of which never left the Church, 2 of which left and later returned, and 4 of which left and never returned. All of them remained true to what they saw.

To prove the Book of Mormon a fraud, one has to go over, under, around, and through these men.

Yes, definitely. I love to study these topics and try to piece together the puzzle of how my faith fits into it, particularly what God’s plan is in all of it.

The questioner wanted more detail, specifically with regards to how I could still believe in God considering what I've studied during my life.

Below is the longer answer I gave. I'm preserving it here because, well, it took a long time to write it. And, Quora can be...squirrelly sometimes as to where answers get moved, if they get renamed, or if they get downvoted out of existence. Furthermore, the current design of Quora makes reading threaded comments tedious.

Special hat tip to Dr. Daniel C. Peterson, who I've gratuitously linked in the footnotes only because he's pretty much covering ALL the bases on this topic with his more recent blog posts on the subject of science vs. religion. Saves me a ton of time and typing and I'm happy to promote his work here.

My short answer is “how can I not?”. But I know that’s not a satisfying answer to anyone but me. :) So, here is my longer answer.

First, to set aside the ill-conceived notion that one cannot be a scientist and a believer in God (and believe me, I’ve read and do understand ALL of the atheists’ views on this), here’s a list (The Rich, Historic Roll Call of Great Christian Thinkers and Scientists) of all the scientists over the years whose faith enlightened (was the reason for) their even exploring science. In other words, they pursued science because they saw God in it and wanted to know His creation more, not in spite of God (even if the Catholic Church often disagreed). Some like to insist that they were pioneering lone scientific renegades who were rebelliously and atheistically challenging the presumed wisdom of the Christian orthodoxy. But, that’s an incomplete (or disingenuous) reading of history and biography. In fact, many were (and remained even in the face of severe persecution) faithful Christians who maintained their belief in God until they died. See also Western science as a byproduct of medieval Christian theology.

I was also quite impressed by the book “Signature in the Cell” by Stephen C. Meyer (Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design). It’s controversial in secular science circles, for sure, but his thesis made complete sense to me from the perspective of being both a Christian and a computer programmer with an interest in genetics. DNA is very, very literally a computer programming language, with its medium being biology rather than silicon. It is something that can be directly manipulated and changed (and even upgraded!) by the CRISPR CAS9 prokaryotic immune system. Given that DNA uses and gives rise to biological nanomachines of astounding complexity and elegance (that we have yet to duplicate from whole cloth), which, in turn, lead to an escalating and exponential scope of complex systems, organisms, organs, anatomy, and enablement of consciousness itself, there is zero doubt in my mind, after comparing the fundamentals of computer programming with the fundamentals of DNA replication and bio-computation that goes on in the cell, that an Intelligent Mind had to be behind its design. Just by sheer statistical improbability alone that all that DNA is, does, and the information (not just data) that it contains could have emerged by random chance and mutation. Someone imbued DNA with information. Information is a byproduct of intelligence.

As a student of American History, the main thing that impacts me to this very day is the extreme improbability that the American Revolution should ever have succeeded if it were not from an Outside Influence. There were simply too many improbable “coincidences” for a tiny, disorganized, hungry, diseased, under-armed, ragtag band of inexperienced farmer-soldiers to have ever defeated what was then the greatest military superpower that the world had ever seen. See “Delivered by the Power of God”.

Logically speaking, just because all religions can’t be true doesn’t mean one religion can’t be true nor that there can’t be truth in religion. It’s not a binary either/or proposition. Truth is a both/and proposition. You can have truth in both science and religion. And the five physical senses are not the only way to know something is true or part of reality or cosmology (Is genuine knowledge available beyond the sciences?). We cannot begin to “see” the quantum realm of science. Our instruments are limited by the smallness of scale at that level. The quantum world is smaller than the photons we need to bounce off of its properties to see them. All our “seeing” of it is limited to second- and third-hand observations, and that is often limited to related phenomena where we have to infer rather than deduce to make a conclusion. At a certain point, that becomes more like faith than science. Indeed, the more we find out, the more questions we have.

Again, after reading all the atheists’ objections to the concept of God and a Creator, I can’t understand how anyone can look into the ever-expanding and infinitely complex cosmos and, at the other end, the incredible incomprehensibility of the tiniest yet cosmically impactful quantum phenomena, and not see Pure Intelligence.

Below are more articles by one of my favorite authors/researchers on this topic, Dr. Daniel C. Peterson. These short articles capture perfectly the essence of all my intended responses to the objections I perceive that you might have. I challenge you to read them all, as I have, before you respond. They’re actually notes he’s blogging about as he writes a book on this very topic (no idea when it will be published). After having reviewed your Quora thoughts on these topics, I think you’ll find his work enlightening as far as understanding how people who are religious can also be scientific (and vice versa!). With this list, I’m giving you everything he’s researched in order of most recent up to January 2018 (there’s much more beyond that).

This is one more example of the absence of evidence not necessarily being evidence of absence. Eventually, we will find many more pieces of evidence that help confirm what we already know by testimony to be true from the Book of Mormon.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

One of the most persistent "faith-destroying rumors" (as I like to call them) about Book of Mormon archaeology is that we ought to have found much more "proof" (the real word is evidence) of the historicity of the Book of Mormon through archaeological discoveries by now.

Given that I am a big proponent of the well-established theory of Mesoamerica being the core of Book of Mormon civilizations and events, I'm sharing some insights from a recent article by National Geographic regarding the literally groundbreaking technology of LiDAR in the core of Classic Mayan civilization (ca. 250-900 AD), which is being used to revolutionize archaeological discoveries in our time. I'm going to do so in the context of the accusations made against Book of Mormon historicity claims.

CLAIM: "The scale of civilization as narrated in the Book of Mormon has never been discovered in Mesoamerica."

NEW EVIDENCE: “'Most people had been comfortable with population estimates of around 5 million,' said Estrada-Belli, who directs a multi-disciplinary archaeological project at Holmul, Guatemala. 'With this new data it’s no longer unreasonable to think that there were 10 to 15 million people there—including many living in low-lying, swampy areas that many of us had thought uninhabitable.'”

CLAIM: "No evidence has ever been found that Mayan civilizations as a candidate for Book of Mormon civilizations ever built transportation or urban infrastructure at the scale claimed by the Book of Mormon."

NEW EVIDENCE: "Virtually all the Mayan cities were connected by causeways wide enough to suggest that they were heavily trafficked and used for trade and other forms of regional interaction. These highways were elevated to allow easy passage even during rainy seasons. In a part of the world where there is usually too much or too little precipitation, the flow of water was meticulously planned and controlled via canals, dikes, and reservoirs."
CLAIM: "Nothing has ever been found in Mesoamerica to correlate with the idea that Book of Mormon civilizations had massive, decades-long wars involving defensive earthworks and large cities."

NEW EVIDENCE: "Among the most surprising findings was the ubiquity of defensive walls, ramparts, terraces, and fortresses. 'Warfare wasn’t only happening toward the end of the civilization,' said Garrison. 'It was large-scale and systematic, and it endured over many years.'"

To put all of this in even more perspective, this initial LiDAR survey covered a mere 800 square miles of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in the Petén region of Guatemala. Imagine what else we don't know and how much bigger the population and infrastructure scale could be with further LiDAR studies!

Further, what we see under the forest canopy is what remains of the 250-900 A.D. civilizations that build on top of prior structures. That puts what we know right at the end of the peak of Nephite/Lamanite interactions. The evidence we're looking for to cover the period of the first Nephite arrival (591-589 B.C.) and, further back, the Jaredite arrival (approximately the 3rd Millennium B.C.), is subject to discovery only after we've spent decades digging through the layers of the Classic and Post-Classic Maya remnants, if it can even be found at all after being looted/repurposed/decomposed.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: those who claim archaeology will never uncover evidences of Book of Mormon historicity are simply not patient enough and/or don't have an understanding of how archaeology is a long-haul activity that often involves more uncertainty and questions the more discoveries are made. It is simply naive to think that one can sally forth into the jungles, dig a little bit, and find direct, clear, irrefutable proof of the existence of Jaredites, Nephites, and Lamanites. Too many confounding factors are possible through the complexities of time, the elements, and intermingling civilizations for that to be a possibility. Instead, we must take our time and carefully sift through data to find correlations that amount to a preponderance of evidence. We're far too early in our nascent understanding of Mesoamerican archaeology for that to have borne the kind of fruit that anti-Book of Mormon critics suppose should have been found by now.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

It's amazing to me that there are still people who say that "Joseph Smith made up the Book of Mormon". Let's see if we can clear this argument up once and for all (again). ;)

Below is an excerpt from Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol. 8, Ch. 11, pp. 221-2 where Professor Nibley explains to his student precisely how difficult this would have been for Joseph to accomplish. Among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints, this is a familiar "meme", but it is not well-known to the world at large.

Before reading this, keep in mind that Joseph had exactly none of the modern-day conveniences that modern-day fiction writers have. And even they strain and exert themselves to overcome writer's block, research challenges, plot holes, continuity problems, grammar difficulties, character naming trouble, and a variety of other authorship issues that, today, should be easy by comparison.

Professor Nibley told his students:

"Since Joseph Smith was younger than most of you and not nearly so experienced or well-educated as any of you at the time he copyrighted the Book of Mormon, it should not be too much to ask you to hand in by the end of the semester (which will give you more time than he had) a paper of, say, five to six hundred pages in length. Call it a sacred book if you will, and give it the form of a history. Tell of a community of wandering Jews in ancient times; have all sorts of characters in your story, and involve them in all sorts of public and private vicissitudes; give them names--hundreds of them--pretending that they are real Hebrew and Egyptian names of circa 600 b.c.; be lavish with cultural and technical details--manners and customs, arts and industries, political and religious institutions, rites, and traditions, include long and complicated military and economic histories; have your narrative cover a thousand years without any large gaps; keep a number of interrelated local histories going at once; feel free to introduce religious controversy and philosophical discussion, but always in a plausible setting; observe the appropriate literary conventions and explain the derivation and transmission of your varied historical materials.

"Above all, do not ever contradict yourself! For now we come to the really hard part of this little assignment. You and I know that you are making this all up--we have our little joke--but just the same you are going to be required to have your paper published when you finish it, not as fiction or romance, but as a true history! After you have handed it in you may make no changes in it (in this class we always use the first edition of the Book of Mormon); what is more, you are to invite any and all scholars to read and criticize your work freely, explaining to them that it is a sacred book on a par with the Bible. If they seem over-skeptical, you might tell them that you translated the book from original records by the aid of the Urim and Thummim--they will love that! Further to allay their misgivings, you might tell them that the original manuscript was on golden plates, and that you got the plates from an angel. Now go to work and good luck!

"To date no student has carried out this assignment, which, of course, was not meant seriously. But why not? If anybody could write the Book of Mormon, as we have been so often assured, it is high time that somebody, some devoted and learned minister of the gospel, let us say, performed the invaluable public service of showing the world that it can be done."

Again, let me emphasize that Joseph Smith had no professors, no libraries, no store of common knowledge of any of these subjects. He had no computers, spell check, Internet, or other founts of wisdom about the ancient world and languages. All he had was the revelation he initially received via Urim and Thummim (yes, the concept of a Urim and Thummim is biblical and also something Joseph was not likely to have been previously familiar with at that age) and, as he became more comfortable with the process of revelation, direct information from the Spirit.

Another excerpt from Professor Nibley's writings is also helpful in understanding just how authentically divine the Book of Mormon has to be.

"The book starts out with a colophon telling us whose hand wrote it, what his sources were, and what it is about; the author boasts of his pious parents and good education, explaining that his background was an equal mixture of Egyptian and Jewish, and then moves into this history establishing time, place, and background; the situation at Jerusalem and the reaction of Nephi's father to it, his misgivings, his prayers, a manifestation that came to him in the desert as he traveled on business and sent him back post-haste "to his own house at Jerusalem," where he has a great apocalyptic vision.

"All this and more in the first seven verses of the Book of Mormon. The writer knows exactly what he is going to say and wastes no time in saying it. Throughout the book we get the impression that it really is what its authors claim it to be, a highly condensed account from much fuller records. We can imagine our young rustic getting off to this flying start, but can we imagine him keeping up the pace for ten pages? For 588 pages the story never drags, the author never hesitates or wanders, he is never at a loss. What is really amazing is that he never contradicts himself." -- Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol. 8, p. 227

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Since I visited Cahokia Mounds in 2012, I've been fascinated by many parallels between what I witnessed as a missionary in Guatemala and as a tourist in the Yucatan and what I saw at Cahokia. Check out this article on Cahokia Mounds. It goes into how the Cahokia civilization just up and abandoned their urban project, and for a lot of the same reasons for which Mayan civilizations abandoned their urban centers and lifestyles.

Sacred meetings and ceremonies – the city’s purpose – took place on the plazas and in buildings inside the palisade. “There was a belief that what went on on Earth also went on in the spirit world, and vice versa,” says James Brown, a professor emeritus of archaeology at Northwestern University. “So once you went inside these sacred protocols, everything had to be very precise.”

Further, the article states,

...it appears the Mississippians may have conducted ritual human sacrifices, judging by what appears to be hundreds of people, mostly young women, buried in these mass graves. Some were likely strangled; others possibly died of bloodletting. Four men were found with their heads and hands cut off; another burial pit had mostly males who had been clubbed to death.

Did post-Book of Mormon era Yucatecan Mayans travel northward across the Gulf of Mexico, or along its Western coast, to the Mississippi river and influence or even directly establish the Mississippian cultures, urban centers, and places and methods of worship and sacrifice?

Sunday, May 1, 2016

The following is my attempt to put into context...a wider context than is currently available in the public debate...about what it means when a person joins the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I do not mean it as a trivialization of the struggles of those who choose to later leave the Church of Christ. I mean it only as a way of linking back to the principles taught in the Book of Mormon and to provide more sure footing for those who are thinking about running away from the faith they once embraced. The arms you're running into by fleeing the Church of Christ are not arms that will love you. They are not arms that will save you. Please stay. If you've left us, please come back.
I'm leaving the church...the church of the devil.

There. I've said it. I feel much better now. For years I've been suffering in silence, not knowing whether my stance on that church's definition of morality would put me in a bad light with its members. I knew their beliefs and they didn't know mine. But it's finally out in the open, and I feel better for saying it.

I know that I'll be excommunicated from the church of the devil for my belief that that church is in error. I'm 100% fine with that. The truth is, it always has been in error. I know that the high priests of that church will come after me and put me into disciplinary councils to shame and even force me into continuing to follow their perverse doctrines, but I will not comply.

I will shout from the rooftops how wrong it is to believe in gay marriage and its opening the door to purposely denying children the love of both a father and a mother in the bonds of eternal marriage. I will teach that the "fluidity of sex and gender" (as that church defines it) is a false doctrine. I will actively fight against the moral relativism its adherents seek to promulgate. I will not fall victim to its rites and ordinances of earth worship, committing murder to get gain, pornography, abortion on demand for purposes of convenience, gossip, drug use, and adoration of celebrity, among many, many other sins, none of which are new under the sun.

Many will tell me I'm a fool for leaving that church. I guess I can't blame them. That church offers many enticing things: sex without consequence, murder without reprimand, hate sanctioned by a politically correct ideology, disobedience to parents, maligning of good men and women, and enmity toward commandments of God and toward His Christ.

Indeed, the church of the devil has taught me many things against Christ. In my disciplinary council, which will go on and on and on for the rest of my life until that blessed day when I return to my Heavenly Father, I'll be told the following:

That there can be no atonement made for the sins of men because, as the church of the devil teaches, there is no sin to atone for...unless it's a sin against the church of the devil, in which case it still cannot be atoned for, only punished

That every man fares in this life according to the management of the creature (natural selection), so every man will either prosper because of genius and conquer according to strength...unless we're talking about "inequality", in which case you will be forced to be generous, even against God's plan of righteous giving

That anything a man does is not a crime...unless he does something against the church of the devil

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Some who have approached the Book of Mormon with the assumption that an ancient Israelite text could only be written in Hebrew have found the notion of reformed Egyptian to be a stumbling block in accepting the Book of Mormon's claims to be scripture.

However, many samples of a form of shorthand script based on Egyptian hieratic script have been found to be used in and around Israel, by Israelites, dating back to the time Lehi left Jerusalem (600 BC).

BookOfMormonCentral.org publishes regular KnoWhy articles to dig deeper into Book of Mormon topics. Today's KnoWhy explains the Book of Mormon prophet Moroni's claim to be writing in "reformed Egyptian". Nephi also mentioned using a form of writing based on Egyptian writing when he said, "Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians."

Here are three of seven points mentioned in the KnoWhy article, just to whet your appetite. I strongly recommend you visit the newly-launched BookOfMormonCentral.org to really dig into the Book of Mormon text and research.

First, Israelite texts at the time of Lehi employed numbers and signs from an ancient Egyptian script called hieratic.1 There are over 200 samples of hieratic found in the regions of Israel and Judah.2

Second, LDS scholars John A. Tvedtnes and Stephen D. Ricks3 collected examples of texts written in a Hebrew-related language being transcribed in hieratic Egyptian dating to 600 years before Lehi.4 They also shared an example of Psalms 20:2–6 written in Aramaic translation using Egyptian characters. This example dates to about 400 years after Lehi’s time.5

Third, archaeologists have also found Egyptian hieratic writing on broken pieces of pots from an Israelite city dating to Lehi’s time. As scholars explain, “the text … is written in a combination of Egyptian hieratic and Hebrew characters but can be read entirely as Egyptian.”6

Followers

What is the Book of Mormon?

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Don't judge this book by its cover or by what you might think you know about it. Take some time to read it. We have read it numerous times and are posting topics here to help you as you read. As Herbert Spencer once said, “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

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